We all know that MSoft thinks the world looks the same wherever you are and that all buildings are white and all roads are grey (I have lived in four countries and none of them had grey roads):Yesterday I flew for the first time in Asia and looking out of my window I could have been in Croatia or Massachusets.I have FScene for Euroland and South America (which hasnt improved things much - for Brasil the greens are wrong and the earth isnt red enough) and I wanted to try and make Asia look a bit different with brighter, bolder colours.So ......What i want to know is, if I buy myself another World texture set, can I identify a continent and swap out just the ones I want? I wouldnt want the product to auto-install cos I only want the new textures in a specific continent - so how does the file-naming work - is it easy to see whats what?So .....What texture set would Asia flyers recommend? Even freeware would do. Thanks.

It tells you in the terrain SDK which textures appear in which areas: So for example 002b2su4.bmp theoretically is for North America where 002a2su4.bmp would be for europe. The only problem is there is no 002a2su4.bmp in the default texture set so in europe you'll see the North American counterpart of the 002 texture (desert) instead. Maybe there are no deserts in Europe :) . Terrain SDK is here: http://download.microsoft.com/download/4/f/f/4ffb2a54-cb13-4c3d-996d-7e7bd86b884c/terrain_sdk_setup.exe Once you install it open "TerrainTextureNames.doc" for the full lowdown. Jim

Thanks Jim.Unless I am missing something fundamental here you have kindly done the work for me, cos now I know I want to backup and replace the "f" textures.Why do you suggest that I download the SDK - jus to get more insight or do I need it as a tool? (I always thought the SDk was for smart folks who know what theyre doing)

... I want to backup and replace the "f" textures.

Sorta, the problem is not all texture classes will have an "f". Those that don't will use the "b" instead. If I may offer another idea. There is a freeware package that was developed for Australia, called VOZ, that uses the default textures in a creative way. It includes an applet that switches between different texture sets to enhance the wide diversity of the Australian landscape. I, and others, have used their textures in other parts of the world. As an example, they have some nice rain forest that works in other parts of the world. If you would like to try it, it will cost you nothing more than your time. You can download VOZ 1.8 for free from here- http://aussiex.org/forum/index.php?/files/category/16-voz-downloads-fs9/ regards,Joe

Hey JoeI once looked at VOZ and loved their textures, (the rich Australian colours would look nicel for my current home, Brasil, which is awfully washed out with FScene) but I seem to remember that they were "World" textures and the installer gave you all or nothingAre you saying that I can take some textures and install them in the world region that I want? That would be so neat.I am downloading now to see what I can understand of the setup.Be prepared for me to bother you here again. :)

Also note that autogen, defined in default.xml also has regionalized models using the same scheme. scott s..

Thanks Jim.Unless I am missing something fundamental here you have kindly done the work for me, cos now I know I want to backup and replace the "f" textures.Why do you suggest that I download the SDK - jus to get more insight or do I need it as a tool? (I always thought the SDk was for smart folks who know what theyre doing)

Nope, probably no need to download the SDK but it tells you what the numbers mean and stuff like that if you're interested. You could also have a go at photoreal terrain if you're texture-swapping experiments don't yield an acceptable result. That's also covered in the SDK. I've done all sorts of ground texture hacks, I'm using a bunch of resized FSX textures along with some GEPro textures, and some default FS9 at the moment. Nconvert.exe can do batch resizing of 1024x1024 textures and Imagetool can convert them to a format FS9 can use. You can also write batch files to rename a particular group of textures so that they display on another landclass area. Sometimes the result is pretty wild! Jim

Jim, thanks for all this but you are waaay over my head here with batch files and converting Xs to 9s.I really want a simple solution - just putting the textures I like where I want. Thats me: want it easy and want it now, or be prepared for a silly kid bawling and stamping his feet! I am still confused as to the "not all the textures will be "F" and you will have to use some "B" textures" and of course Scott has thoughtfully brought up the .agn issue.Lets say I separate all the Fs from VOZ: ready to substitute the MS Fs - how am I going to know whats missing and which Bs I have to get?Now Im more interested in the red VOZ textures for Brasil than my previous ideas about brightening up Asia - they would be pretty good, but Im wondering if I (and I dont mean intuitive, patient and methodical folks like you) havent bitten off more than I can chew here.

Well, that's what I mean with the batch file renaming, for example say you had a default texture covering the majority of Brazil, llke maybe 009d2Su1.bmp and you'd like to replace it with 050g2Su1.bmp from the voz package (actually there are usually 7 of them, i.e. 050d2Su1.bmp, 050d2Su2.bmp, etc). You can do a "dir /b 009*.bmp > something.bat" to come up with a file list and I usualy open that in an advanced text editor like Textpad and use a macro or block select mode to make some mass edits and come up with a list of batch commands something like below: ren 009d2Su1.bmp 050g2Su1.bmpren 009d2Su2.bmp 050g2Su2.bmpren 009d2Su3.bmp 050g2Su3.bmpren 009d2Su4.bmp 050g2Su4.bmpren 009d2Su5.bmp 050g2Su5.bmpren 009d2Su6.bmp 050g2Su6.bmpren 009d2Su7.bmp 050g2Su7.bmp OK this is all hypothetical, I don't even know if 050g exists in the voz package, but you get the idea. Of course make backups first so you can go back when you screw something up. A lot can be done with batch processing. Not that you asked, but just last night I was trying to identify a certain landclass texture so I could bring it into photoshop and use it as a reference for color matching a photoscenery I'm working on. Nconvert.exe has the ability to imprint text onto an image, so I wrote a quick batch file to imprint the file names onto my 009b textures so I could see in the sim which files I need to be working with: If you reach a point where you've determined which files you'd like to swap with which and need some help with a batch file, let me know. Jim

Oh boy - and I had to ask the smartest guy in class!!!!! Were you one of those kids who took all his toys (and moms hairdryer) apart to see how they worked? Here you are matching def LC to photoscenery tile by tile - and all I want is redder earth!!! The procedure you outlined is beyond my ken - at least at first glance: I have used batch editors that came with patches and stuff like that, but as for creating one or writing commands - well - not. Im going to try and get my head around this a little later on, after my second cup of coffee.Interestingly I have found no mention of any more "appropriate" grounds textures for Brasil in any of the local blogs or sites I have found so far (I live in Brasil) but the sim community here is big so somebody must have tried something. As long as I fly within Brasil (not in or out of) I can use the VOZ "world convert" to get myself the colours I want and then "UnVoz" to go fly elseplace, so I´m going to play around with that for a while. Is this tile-matching you´re doing a personal project - to have your backyard looking the way you want, or are you involved in commercial development? I´ll be back: have a good day.

Were you one of those kids who took all his toys (and moms hairdryer) apart to see how they worked?

Well, yeah pretty much, it drove my poor Dad crazy. Definitely not the smartest guy in the class though... :( South America could probably benefit from some landclass adjustment as much as anything. Landclass is basically the "map" that tells the sim which type of land should be displayed in a given area, vegetation, cities, fields, etc. Unfortunately I know of no landclass add ons for South America which sux. MS didn't spend a lot of time getting it right so the entire continent looks like it's covered in a single repeating texture. Too bad, because it's a very beautiful part of the world. If you can VOZ and un-VOZ to get the effect you want there's probably no need to use any batch files. Most of this texture swapping works the same way in that what looks good in one part of the world doesn't look too good in another, so you'll be swapping out textures depending on where you want to fly anyway, so VOZ is as good as anything else. Still, if you need some help with any mass-processing of textures or something let me know.

Is this tile-matching you´re doing a personal project - to have your backyard looking the way you want, or are you involved in commercial development?

This is actually a commercial project for Orbx, but I can't say which airport just yet. :( Jim

After Vozing the Central textures and puttering about both on the Atlantic coast and inland (the "interior", as its charmingly called) I have come to the same conclusion as you:- that the main culprit is the lazy way MS applied Landclass to the whole world. It would be nice to see definate differences in both LC and textures and colours, moving from one continent to another, but the only way to do that is aquiring various texture sets and applying bits of this to that and bits of the other to ... etc, using the lettering system you showed me from the SDK. It could be done, but by a better man than II got sent a screenshot from a guy I know who uses a texture set called SV-Texture which is bright green and contrasty and looks awfully good for Asia but pretty nasty for everywhere else so in theory my idea would work but would require just too much trouble. I have a payware LC for South America by Raymond Taburet but its not a huge improvement and doesnt address the colour issue. Do you have FSX? Is that any better?

FSX has more regions, but still has the problem that there isn't a unique bitmap for every LC and region combo..scott s.

Im very grateful for the input and interest from you guys and I dont want to drag this out too much longer, especially if its not going to go anywhere (at least not where I, petulant and impatient, want it to) but in theory it would be possible to rename files from (lets say) Voz Central so they replace all the MS default "d" files for South America -right?And all that would be needed is a batch file coverter written for just that purpose - right? Or am I being much too simplistic in my understanding of what you have patiently tried to explain? Vozing is all very well as long as you dont want to "inter-continental", and whilst the manual explains about saving the flight, re-Vozing and restarting that is both a pain in the derriere and still not viable with many aircraft. If you tell me that either I cant do what I want or that to do it would be more trouble than its worth I will put this one to bed. ThanksNicholas

Well, it looks like MS didn't actually use any "d" bmps for South America, there are none in the default texture set anyway. Thinking possibly the sim would use them if they were available, I made a set of "d" .bmps by copying a garish bright yellow .bmp to every concievable "d" there could be (001d2su1.bmp, 001d2su2.bmp - 002d2Su1.bmp, 002d2Su2.bmp, etc) and when I fired up the sim in S. America I didn't see a speck of yellow anywhere.. Maybe the mention of the "d" texture region in the SDK is another of MS' good intentions that just never materialized by the release deadline. So anyway, it looks like there's no way to use a VOZ texture (or any texture enhancement) specifically in S. America without having it show up in the rest of the world too. You could try making a photoscenery for localized areas I suppose, or use something like tile proxy, but then you lose all your autogen. I believe it's possible to make a custom landclass that calls out custom textures, but I wouldn't know how to do it and it, and the custom textures would need autogen annotation which would be quite time consuming. It doesn't appear there's a simple one-time solution, you'll have continue VOZ/unVOZing as you've been doing, Sorry. Maybe someone else has an idea. Jim